Highlights

Naysayer & GilsunNGTV - Vol #5

I love/hate writing about music because there’s always someone suggesting something, and t’s usually more taste-driven than anything else. Not to say friendship isn’t found, just sometimes it’s hard to enjoy, cover, and frequent every thing. Well, our man Nico Callaghan (he reviewed Falling in Reverse on TMT; BIG UP!PS) sent me a link to NGTV - Vol #5 by Naysayer & Gilsun, stating, “Don’t know if you choco [peepz] are in on this duo of DJs: http://bit.ly/16dwMB8. But they are pretty fantastic. And those images were very nice while they lasted. Please continue if you get the time.” (That last bit is because I had spammed TMT writers with random Google-found pic links.) And when “Do you ever miss having someone to talk to?” is asked around the five-minute mark and beyond: shit gets real.

So, I’m dancing around my living room naked at noon. So it’s FUCK WEEKDAY. Feel that cinematic energy. We’ve all met before. Be now. With me in words on here in this mix. Hi!

NGTV - Vol #5

I love/hate writing about music because there’s always someone suggesting something, and t’s usually more taste-driven than anything else. Not to say friendship isn’t found, just sometimes it’s hard to enjoy, cover, and frequent every thing. Well, our man Nico Callaghan (he reviewed Falling in Reverse on TMT; BIG UP!PS) sent me a link to NGTV - Vol #5 by Naysayer & Gilsun, stating, “Don’t know if you choco [peepz] are in on this duo of DJs: http://bit.ly/16dwMB8. But they are pretty fantastic. And those images were very nice while they lasted. Please continue if you get the time.” (That last bit is because I had spammed TMT writers with random Google-found pic links.) And when “Do you ever miss having someone to talk to?” is asked around the five-minute mark and beyond: shit gets real.

So, I’m dancing around my living room naked at noon. So it’s FUCK WEEKDAY. Feel that cinematic energy. We’ve all met before. Be now. With me in words on here in this mix. Hi!

Recycled Sleep

Last we heard from Jeffrey D. Witscher, he was kicking it with Oneohtrix Point Never as Rene Hell for a split on NNA Tapes, but after a brief hiatus, he’s returned to his Agents of Chaos label for a new tape by RM Francis. Titled Recycled Sleep, the cassette is inspired by Stockhausen’s “moment form” concept — most notably heard on Kontakte — with pieces “generated automatically in a probabilistic synth patch via Max/MSP” and then “run through another wave shaping patch that used the amplitude & frequency information of the recorded sound to determine the playback speed, position, and direction.” Recycled music. Get it? Hear for yourself:

Rising Damp

Music is full of insular types. Recently, such types have been quietly releasing music that focuses on the wonders of the mundane. Ashley Paul sounds like she recorded Line The Clouds in a creaking bedsit, while Dead Machines appear to be recording the dismantling of it. Meanwhile, Keith Rowe and Graham Lambkin have left their bedsit to inspect the broken plumbing outside.

Having said this, introversion is not always so dreary. Rale’s excessive use of silence is a soothing antidote to CAPITALIST INSANITY, while Sean MCann’s one-man orchestra provides some sonic space for contemplation.

probability a: three studies for compositions of infinite length

Even though William Huston might be better known to a lot of folks as one third of noise rap pioneers clipping., the dude has been releasing excellent slices of minimal ambiance on and off as Rale since 2006. Huston’s music as Rale may be one of the most complete convergences between the more academically minded experimental music of the Erstwhile scene and the current New Age-influenced synth drone work of various American underground labels. Even though Huston’s work often incorporates beautiful sustained harmony like many of his ambient peers, it’s his use of negative space that put his Rale compositions closer to the works of Michael Pisaro or Eliane Radigue than Emeralds.

The music of Rale is all about ADSR, particularly how the attack and decay of Huston’s synthetic sounds enter and leave the natural sound world around them. In Huston’s live performance, this effect is absolutely stunning: Huston’s beautiful chords crescendo until the space physically rattles with sound and then slowly fade to near silence before beginning the process again. When I recently saw Huston perform a set of material at the wulf., it seemed like his synth playing truly interacted with the space; it was a rare instance of harmony and rhythm affecting the physical space in a natural, non-confrontational manner, where both the musical material and the physicality of the space itself seemed integral to the set.

With probability a: three studies for compositions of infinite length, Huston has created another superb recorded work out of this same material. probability… very much builds on Huston’s equally negative space-obsessed The Moon Regarded, and the Bright One Sought from last year. However, probability… is perhaps the most eloquently articulated of his Rale albums yet. The notion of Huston’s synth harmonies emerging from the space itself has been taken to a near psychoacoustic height on this record. One look at the waveforms from this excerpt on SoundCloud can confirm that Huston has found a way to constantly keep sound flowing, even when it feels like nothing’s happening. In this way, the dichotomy between sound and silence narrows further from The Moon Regarded, which found the composer using extremely quiet high frequencies to similar but lesser effect. In this way, probability… takes the Wandelweisser collective’s notion of “silence as sound” and redefines this statement quite literally. Huston’s music shows that sound can still exist within the decay of a particular digital sound, even when the listener perceives what they’re hearing as silence. Ultimately, these differences between the digital near-silences of Huston’s compositions and the natural “silences” of the listener’s space become almost imperceptible, allowing for “compositions of infinite length” to exist even when the record itself ends.

Machine Pattern # 01

Some of my favorite collections of sounds are not really even albums in the conventional sense. Album = a collection of musical pieces meant to signify a whole. Machine Pattern # 01 = a catalogue of aural occurrences, collected more as a reference than as a source of pleasure. Who says references can’t be entertaining though? The best field recordings act as a well-written encyclopedia article or an interesting anecdote in a travelogue; there is clear contextual support to add depth to the recording, and therefore the act of listening becomes something of a learning experience, rather than an emotional one. Field recordings can elicit emotions too. Aki Onda has succeeded to do this with his Cassette Memories series, where field recordings are presented as passages from a tape recorder memoir. Nite Lite has also achieved great results using similar field recording manipulations.

So what is this right here? A caution-yellow tape packaged in styrofoam? Mikel R. Nieto, the music behind the project, wastes no time in pointing out the irony of such a field recording collection: this is literally a tape about tapes. Tapes about tapes have been done before. Tapes as dedications to tapes. Tapes of tape loops of tapes. Tapes as collages of tapes. But this, this beautifully-packaged cassette was made to “re-create the mechanical manufacturing processes that are experienced specifically in AE Harris & Co.” AE Harris & Co. as in 3M. As in the tape company.

Accompanying the cassette, which is limited to 100 copies, is a transcription of the music found within, interpreted by graphic artist Frederico Sancho as typographic symbols. A thoroughly beautiful package and some nice soothing, mechanical rattling of metal pressing and tube-bending machines, this tape has succeeded in its goal of being a viable historical document, an artistic dedication to the AE Harris & Co. workers facilities.